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5G Trials Happening Now in India, BSNL & Ciena Team Up

The promise of next gen 5G networks continues to keep everyone on edge waiting for availability to begin. Not just because of lightning fast speeds over older generations, but because of better responsiveness and the ability to power future-ready technologies emerging on the market.

In 2019, we’re starting to see a lot of those efforts put in motion. Recent research looking at 5G Networks found that the global 5G Technology market is expected to reach approximately $73 million by the end of 2023.

Working out the kinks as these new solutions hit the market is important. From interoperability trials to improvements in coverage areas, there is lot of work to be done.

A new partnership between BSNL and Ciena is working to improve latency concerns in India as they test new trial roll-outs of 5G.

Specifically, the company will make use of Ciena’s Converged Packet Optical and Packet Networking platforms and it’s Blue Planet Intelligent Automation software which offers the ability for IT and network teams to work together on network optimization.

According to one report, the testing will be looking at front haul, mid-haul and backhaul transport to discover where latency issues may exist and how to solve them.

Ongoing initiatives to grow 5G technology in the Asia-Pacific region as well as government support for the next gen network is creating ripe opportunities for growth in the area.

As a top provider of communications services in India, BSNL already has 113 million mobile subscribers and 12.56 million wireline customers.

Ciena also has deep roots in India and held 22 percent market share of the overall India Optical networks market in 2017.

In addition to providing telecom operators with Converged Packet Optical and Ethernet solutions it also has partnerships with India’s government to provide equipment and the core transport and switching backbone networks for their armed forces.

Commenting on the benefits of the new partnership to deliver better services in India, Anupam Shrivastava, chairman and managing director of BSNL was quoted as saying, “We expect that these trials will show the benefit of 5G which promises to deliver speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second, as much as 30 times faster than 4G.”

Web-scale Networking

The idea of Web-scale IT is more than just another 'hot' buzzword or problematic disruption. What started with data center operators has become mainstream thinking in large enterprises, and it's now driving changes in service provider operations, as well. Web-scale tools that allow application development to move quickly have also created some challenges for service provider networks.